Faster than a Speeding 980

Faster than a Speeding 980

ByAndre RodriguesJuly 19, 2016, 8:19 p.m.

With the release of the 1080, 970, 1060 and even 480, all these numbers are driving us up the wall and making our conversations at IGN devolve to jargon. You see, last few weeks have been an emotional graphics card roller coaster ride that has the makings of a very short soap opera. The much anticipated Geforce GTX 1080 and the 1070 dropped earlier, and while they were super Pascal powered, the Indian prices weren't too flattering to say the least. So the Indian gamers looked towards camp AMD; god rays starting flooding out to the sound of angel singing as the Radeon RX480 was about to be launched. Except it all ended in disaster as AMD almost doubled the price, and that wasn't even counting the extra costs. The consumer backlash thankfully led to AMD retracting the extra costs though.

Now all that's left is the Nvidia 1060 and, all the aforementioned drama have left us and the community skeptical. Going by the previous 10-series launches we expected the 1060 to be overpriced. We've never been happier to be wrong with the rather fantastic price point Nvidia gave the 1060. So let's get right down to it.

Build Quality

If you have read our Nvidia GTX 1070 review, we practically loved the low-poly goodness of the Founder's Edition. We got a founders edition of the 1060 too, which has that same look, with the same tough metal exterior. Except that it's slightly smaller than the 1070 and 1080 Founder's Editions. The other marked difference is that the board is open on the underside of the card and you can see the circuits as opposed to the closed back plate on the bigger cards. You can read more of the Founder's Edition shell on our 1070 review.

According to Nvidia the 1060 has half the power draw of the 980, and it's evident in the single 6 PIN power socket, as opposed to the 980's dual 6 PIN. The IO panel out back is standard with it's dual DisplayPorts, single HDMI and DVI ports.

The 1060 Founder's Edition is a beautiful piece of hardware. Right up there with the legends in terms of product design. Something that in theory does not need to extend to graphics cards, as they go into a cabinet. Yet, Nvidia did a great job on the build and design of this.

Performance

According to Nvidia, the GTX 1060 is supposed to be on par with the GTX 980, which was the flagship of the Maxwell generation. We put that to the test and we weren't disappointed. Before that, let's look at the specs. The base clock is 1506 with a boost clock of 1708, with a whooping 6GB of GDDR5 RAM, which is 2 GB more than the 4GB of the 980; the memory boost is much needed, so you can up those textures to Ultra in games like Shadow of Mordor, GTA V and many more. The memory interface is a 192-bit bus with a speed of 8GBPS. Considering though the RX480 comes with a 256-bit interface, it would be an icing on the cake if the 1060 had one too.

As before, we decided to test in 1080p, which is the predominant gaming resolution according to a Steam survey.

We kicked off the benchmark with Doom, which yielded a 98 average fps on FRAPS as compared to 97 on the 980. The 1070 hit a 133 Fps. So there is a far gap in performance between the 1060 and 1070. With a very small lead on the 980. Doom is a game that's beautiful and easy on the GPU. So we decided to throw something a bit more taxing at it.

New Yorks pandemic streets should be a great battleground for these two GPU's in The Division. We loaded up the games in built benchmarking tool. Set to Ultra, The Division threw different types of architecture and streets full of enemies and particle effects to test the cards. We got 53.3 Average FPS score on the 1060 and 52 on the 980.

We then took to the open world of The Witcher 3's Blood and Wine expansion. We just rode around on a route we selected that wove through villages and open areas with several sheep grazing. Everything was set at Ultra and FRAPS did the benchmarking. We got an average of 54 on the 1060 and 52 on the 980.

Next up was Assassin's Creed Syndicate's turn. Running at 1080p Ultra with full textures and high draw distance. We pulled off a parkour route from ground level across the Thames and up to the highest point where you could see all the buildings from our perch. We got a 53 fps on the 1060 and 49 on the 980. A lead of 4 FPS on average.

We then did the Hitman DirectX 12 benchmark from the new 2016 Hitman, set in the Paris level. Now the benchmarking tool is a bit wonky. We got a 51.7 fps as an average score on the 1060, while the 980 yielded a 51. The odd thing is that the max frames on the 1060 was 159, whereas on the 980 it was 186, which was a bit weird.

Judging by the numbers, the 1060 performs a bit better than the 980. Given that the 1060 drivers are new, you can look at a few more fps gains as time goes by. The Dynamic Super Resolutions worked well with games like Divinity: Original Sin and Pillars of Eternity. At the time of writing this review, Ansel was available for test on Mirror's Edge. However, we would leave those impressions for another story. The bottom line is that we absolutely love this card. We can also absolutely say that this is one of the best cards you can buy right now.

Price and Value

We compared the GTX 1060 to the 980, a card at launch retailed for more than Rs. 45,000. The GTX 1060 is retailing at a fantastic Rs. 22,999. This is for the base model which are the specs we noted above. Most OEMs like Zotac have already unveiled their special editions, with price tags going up to Rs. 25000.

To put things in perspective on the bang this card offers for your buck, the 970 retails at around 25,000, and the 980 around 45,000. The 1060 is a card that surpasses the 980 at half the price, even lower than the 970's starting base price. Making this an even better deal than the AMD RX480. This is the card you have been waiting for.

The Verdict

With an unmatched performance to price ratio, the Nvidia GTX 1060 card is a beast. That can be yours at a fantastic price. Which makes all the difference.

9.5

Amazing

With an unmatched performance to price ratio, the Nvidia GTX 1060 card is a beast.